EUV lithography is now the leading candidate for next-generation semiconductor manufacturing at critical dimensions (CDs) of 70 nm and below. In general, lithography refers to processes for pattern transfer between various media. A lithographic coating is generally a radiation-sensitized coating suitable for receiving a cast image of the subject pattern. Once the image is cast, it is indelibly formed on the coating. The recorded image may be either a negative or a positive of the subject pattern. Typically, a “transparency” of the subject pattern is made having areas which are selectively transparent or opaque to the impinging radiation. Exposure of the coating through the transparency placed in the close longitudinal proximity to the coating causes the exposed area of the coating to become selectively crosslinked and consequently either more or less soluble (depending on the coating) in a particular solvent developer. The more soluble (i.e., uncrosslinked) areas are removed in the developing process to leave the pattern image in the coating as less soluble crosslinked polymer.
Projection lithography is a powerful and essential tool for microelectronics processing and has supplanted proximity printing. “Long” or “soft” x-rays (a.k.a. Extreme UV) (wavelength rate of 10 to 20 nm) are now at the forefront of research in efforts to achieve smaller transferred feature sizes. With projection photolithography, a reticle (or mask) is imaged through a reduction-projection (demagnifying) lens onto a wafer. Reticles for EUV projection lithography typically comprise a glass substrate coated with an EUV absorbing material covering portions of the reflective surface. In operation, EUV radiation from the illumination system (condenser) is projected toward the surface of the reticle and radiation is reflected from those areas of the reticle reflective surface which are exposed, i.e., not covered by the EUV absorbing material. The reflected radiation is re-imaged to the wafer using a reflective optical system and the pattern from the reticle is effectively transcribed to the wafer.
A source of EUV radiation is the laser-produced plasma EUV source, which depends upon a high power, pulsed laser (e.g., a yttrium aluminum garnet (“YAG”) laser, or an excimer laser, delivering 500 to 1,000 watts of power to a 50 μm to 250 μm spot, thereby heating a source material to, for example 250,000° C., to emit EUV radiation from the resulting plasma. Plasma sources are compact, and may be dedicated to a single production line so that malfunction does not close down the entire plant. A stepper employing a laser-produced plasma source is relatively inexpensive and could be housed in existing facilities. It is expected that EUV sources suitable for photolithography that provide bright, incoherent EUV and that employ physics quite different from that of the laser-produced plasma source will be developed. One such source under development is the EUV discharge source.
EUV lithography machines for producing integrated circuit components are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,031,598 to Tichenor et al. Referring to FIG. 3, the EUV lithography machine comprises a main vacuum or projection chamber 2 and a source vacuum chamber 4. Source chamber 4 is connected to main chamber 2 through an airlock valve (not shown) which permits either chamber to be accessed without venting or contaminating the environment of the other chamber. Typically, a laser beam 30 is directed by turning mirror 32 into the source chamber 4. A high density gas, such as xenon, is injected into the plasma generator 36 through gas supply 34 and the interaction of the laser beam 30, and gas supply 34 creates a plasma giving off the illumination used in EUV lithography. The EUV radiation is collected by segmented collector 38, that collects about 30% of the available EUV light, and the radiation 40 is directed toward the pupil optics 42. The pupil optics consists of long narrow mirrors arranged to focus the rays from the collector at grazing angels onto an imaging mirror 43 that redirects the illumination beam through filter/window 44. Filter 44 passes only the desired EUV wavelengths and excludes scattered laser beam light in chamber 4. The illumination beam 45 is then reflected from the relay optics 46, another grazing angel mirror, and then illuminates the pattern on the reticle 48. Mirrors 38, 42, 43, and 46 together comprise the complete illumination system or condenser. The reflected pattern from the reticle 48 then passes through the projection optics 50 which reduces the image size to that desired for printing on the wafer. After exiting the projection optics 50, the beam passes through vacuum window 52. The beam then prints its pattern on wafer 54.
As is apparent, the EUV lithography device includes a number of reflective optical components. One of the key enabling technologies for EUV lithography is the development of EUV reflective multilayer mirrors that consists of alternating thin layers of at least two refractive materials. The typical period of this structure for EUV applications is approximately 7 nm and nominally 40 to 80 periods are used. Relatively large optical systems (400 mm or larger) and masks are employed EUV lithography. Optimum performance of these resonant reflective structures requires extremely accurate thickness control of these layers over large reflective areas.
Current methods of coating characterization of single optical elements is done using discrete point reflectometry measurements at selected wavelengths. These measurements determine the reflectivity integrated over a relatively small spot on the surface of an optical element; typically these spots have diameters on the order of a few hundred microns. When information across the entire reflective surface is desired, the optical element is typically moved under the beam and the measurement is repeated at a variety of locations in a serial manner. This can be very time consuming especially when dense information is desired. Dense information is crucial to the goal of characterizing coating uniformity and failure to collect dense information significantly increases the risk of failing to detect localized coating errors on the optical component that could render the device, into which optical component is employed, unusable. The art is in need of a technique that allows the full surface to be characterized in parallel thereby enabling faster evaluation of coating uniformity characteristics.